The newest Battle Royale game is finally here: Apex Legends. Set in the Titanfall universe, this action packed squad based game pulls the thrilling Battle Royale style to a new era with various abilities, roles, and new respawn mechanisms.

I have played Apex Legends for a few hours and immediately was hooked. It has a similar feel to Titanfall 2, even sporting the same firearms and equipment as the original game. First off though, lets talk about the menu:

This menu feels crisp and clean, and is easy to follow. With only 4 headings, you can find what you are looking for with ease. The best part about this menu, however, is the training option – well, the game actually forces you to complete training before entering solo matchmaking, so it isn’t really an option. PUBG, Fortnite, and other such Battle Royale games do not have this option and you have to learn, on the fly, how things work and interact. Nice touch, Respawn!

Elusive Battle Royale Training Menu

Furthermore, there are some unique settings in this game I haven’t seen in many games: You can choose to convert all incoming voice to chat, and also have your incoming text chat played as speech, which is pretty damn cool if you ask me.

Voice to chat & chat to speech settings

Now, if you have both of these equipped it sounds a little redundant to have your incoming voice go to chat text and then playing incoming text chat as speech. You could have just listened to the voice chat in the first place….But, who am I to judge? I can see myself playing the incoming text chat as speech, as it is one less thing to look at on screen.

When you found a team and are getting ready to drop, your team has to choose it’s classes in random order, so that the fight of 3 Hanzo mains trying to obsessively click him before the others do doesn’t happen (I’m not very fond of Hanzo if you can’t tell….)

So, let’s get into actual gameplay. I was actually surprised how clean and fluid everything felt in game, especially for one that is free. When dropping out of the sky, there was no big lag spikes or glitching occurring, unlike SOME Battle Royale Games (cough*PUBG*cough* cough*) – shots fired! I also enjoyed the fact that you didn’t have to parachute down for what seemed like an eternity to reach the ground, as there is no fall damage in Apex, therefore you can thruster pack all the way to the ground.

Jumping Ship

The ping system is easy to follow and key customizable, weapon equipment is automatically placed on the currently selected weapon (huge change, as you aren’t standing there for 10 seconds trying to find the right quickmag), and weapon identification is quite simple, with a borderlands-esque HUD when hovering over the weapon.

Overall, Apex feels smooth, and more like a mix between COD: Black Ops 4 and PUBG, which surprisingly is a better mix than what it sounds. In my opinion, this Battle Royale is much better than that of COD: Block Ops 4 or PUBG (unless you are looking for realistic Gameplay, PUBG is the best for that.) I woud definetely recommend trying it out for yourself – what do you have to lose, it’s free!